Part 13 (1/2)

”No, it wasn't,” he said and he leaned forward with his forehead in his hands.

”I wanted to put an end to it before it was too late. I saw nothing but pain in it for you. It filled me with heart-broken fear to think of the girl such a mother and such a life would make.”

”She was such a little thing--” said Donal, ”--such a tender mite of a thing! She's such a little thing even now.”

”Is she?” said Helen.

Now she knew he would not tell her. And she was right. Up to that afternoon there had always been the chance that he would. Night after night he had been on the brink of telling her of the dream. Only as the beauty and wonder of it grew he had each day given himself another day, and yet another and another. But he had always thought the hour would come and he had been sure she would not grudge him a moment he had held from her. Now he shut everything within himself.

”I wish you had not done it. It was a mistake,” was all he said.

Suddenly he felt thrown back upon himself, heartsick and cold. For the first time in his life he could not see her side of the question. The impa.s.sioned egotism of first love overwhelmed him.

”You met her on the night of the old d.u.c.h.ess' dance,” Helen said.

”Yes.”

”You have met her since?”

”Yes.”

”It is useless for older people to interfere,” she said. ”We have loved each other very much. We have been happy together. But I can do nothing to help you. Oh! Donal, my own dear!”

Her involuntary movement of putting her hand to her throat was a piteous gesture.

”You are going away,” she pleaded. ”Don't let anything come between us--not _now_! It is not as if you were going to stay. When you come back perhaps--”

”I may never come back,” he answered and as he said it he saw again the widowed girl who had hurried past him crying because he had saluted her.

And he saw Robin as he had seen her the night before--Robin who belonged to no one--whom no one missed at any time when she went in or out--who could come and go and meet a man anywhere as if she were the only little soul in London. And yet who had always that pretty, untouched air.

”I only wanted to be sure. It was a mistake. We will never speak of it again,” he added.

”If it was a mistake, forgive it. It was only because I could not hear that your life should not be beautiful. These are not like other days.

Oh! Donal my dear, my dear!” And she broke into weeping and took him in her arms and he held her and kissed her tenderly. But whatsoever happened--whatsoever he did he knew that if he was to save and hold his bliss to the end he could not tell her now.

CHAPTER X

Mrs. Bennett's cottage on the edge of Mersham Wood seemed to Robin when she first saw it to be only a part of a fairy tale. It is true that only in certain bits of England and in pictures in books of fairy tales did one see cottages of its kind, and in them always lived with their grandmothers--in the fairy stories as Robin remembered--girls who would in good time be discovered by wandering youngest sons of fairy story kings. The wood of great oaks and beeches spread behind and at each side of it and seemed to have no end in any land on earth. It nestled against its primaeval looking background in a nook of its own. Under the broad branches of the oaks and beeches tall ferns grew so thick that they formed a forest of their own--a lower, lighter, lacy forest where foxglove spires pierced here and there, and rabbits burrowed and sniffed and nibbled, and pheasants hid nests and sometimes sprang up rocketting startlingly. Birds were thick in the wood and trilled love songs, or twittered and sang low in the hour before their bedtime, filling the twilight with clear adorable sounds. The fairy-tale cottage was whitewashed and its broad eaved roof was thatched. Hollyhocks stood in haughty splendour against its walls and on either side its path. The latticed windows were diamond-paned and their inside ledges filled with flouris.h.i.+ng fuchsias and trailing white campanula, and mignonette. The same flowers grew thick in the crowded blooming garden. And there were nests in the hawthorn hedge. And there was a small wicket gate.

When Robin caught sight of it she wondered--for a moment--if she were going to cry. Only because it was part of the dream and could be nothing else--unless one wakened.

On the tiny porch covered with honeysuckle in bloom, a little, old fairy woman was sitting knitting a khaki sock very fast. She wore a clean print gown and a white ap.r.o.n and a white cap with a frilled border. She had a stick and a nutcracker face and a pair of large iron bowed spectacles. She was so busy that she did not seem to hear Robin as she walked up the path between the borders of pinks and snapdragons, but when she was quite close to her she glanced up.

Robin thought she looked almost frightened when she saw her. She got up and made an apologetic curtsey.

”Eh!” she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, ”to think of me not hearing you. I do beg your pardon, Miss, I do that. I was really waiting here to be ready for you.”